Catch Me As I Fall
by Shirotsuki
Summary: A story of regret, mistakes, and belated epiphanies in the bittersweet course of life. ByakuRuki if you'd like it to be?


_Catch Me As I Fall_

--

The very first time he sees her and she sees him and their eyes meet, his breath is caught in his throat and the world starts spinning round and round and round him. She is beautiful beyond words with dainty ankles, slim wrists and large, large beaming eyes staring right back at him and he cannot help but compare the two. It's wrong to, but he is sure everyone else notices as well because it really is a crime to look so alike.

He is tempted to call out to her with a name he's sure she wouldn't know and perhaps would never get to know. It is on the tip of his tongue and sticking on the roof of his mouth like sickly sweet caramel, but he quickly shuts his mouth and pulls his lips into a thin line.

Silly hopes and dreams that swirl and eddy inside him make him think that maybe, _maybe_, this slim thing of a girl was, _is_, the woman he loves and still does.

"Who are you?" She inquiries, head tilted to the side with eyebrows firmly knitted. Hair he could've sworn he'd run his hands through before is resting lightly against her shoulder.

His words drop, _plummet,_ into his stomach and he doesn't say a thing.

He is disappointed because her voice is much too low to be his Hisana. Because she doesn't remember him or the times they've been together or the times they weren't and really, just _them_. His freak miracle is shot down and he curses anyone and everyone for the delusion he knew wasn't possible in the first place but was wishing, anticipating, and finding himself wanting so, so badly to be true.

He leaves her standing and her question hanging because it's become harder to see her for who she really is and who she really isn't.

--

He sees her the next morning and she is sitting with chopsticks in hand and bowl in the other and eating while looking at him with doe-eyes. It takes him a good moment to realize she is Hisana's sister and not her, never her and never will become her.

He can sense her discomfort in this household because she is from Rukongai just like her older sibling. But he doesn't want to analyze that rift because differences are what hurt people the most. There will always be superficial people who are much too ignorant to realize that gaps are imaginary and incongruenty are of the mind. He figures if their haughty egos are lowered from their pedestals, they would perhaps be able to see.

"Would you like to sit?" It is all she can say because the silence is eating away at her gut and she no longer cares that he is the one who owns the place and who was she to offer him a seat in his own house?

He doesn't say a word and looks to the right of her, to the left of her, right through her and just anywhere but _at_ _her_. He frays her image because it is hard to look at a girl when her eyes are looking for something from you just as you do with her.

He leaves without so much as a word, robes swaying behind, stirring up the dust collecting in the corners.

--

The third day, she asks again when he comes through the door and sees her with rice in her mouth and _washoku_ set out in front of her.

"Would you like to sit?"

Perhaps she is foolish for asking again or mayhaps _he_ is the real fool. He does not want to talk to her because speaking to her is just like acknowledging her presence, in which he adamantly refuses to do so.

He is afraid Hisana's image and her sister's image will overlap and underlap, intertwining and consequently morphing into one and the lines between the two will have become unclear. He does not want to forget Hisana because memories of her is all he has.

He leaves her, but takes a look behind him (curiousity is such a cursed thing). The edges of her lips are hanging down, but whether she seemed relieved or disappointed, he doesn't know.

--

Sometimes, out of the peripherals of his eyes, he can see Hisana. He feels as if he's gone mad, hallucinating about the very manifestation of the euphoria in his life.

She never says a word. She takes her place among the dust and watches, watches, watches, but what of, Byakuya doesn't have a clue.

He likes to think that it's him she's looking at and she does sometimes, but at times she is looking at something, some_one_ else. Byakuya dares not follow her gaze because everytime he turns away from her, she leaves.

"Stay," he wants to say. "Don't go."

But the words jam in his throat and she leaves him, fluttering out of his life as quickly as she came.

--

Rukia is beaming and her smiles are what light up the room; it is her charm. The red-haired boy beside her is spouting out commendations and hugging her and most of all, doing things that make Byakuya want to throw him out the window.

"Nii-sama—" she is used to calling him that now. "Good morning."

He wonders what all this commotion is about, and for the first time in weeks, he speaks to her.

"Good morning," The reply is stumbling out and it is a maladroit answer, but it is progress from not talking to her at all. He can tell she is surprised by the way her eyes widen and she is gaping. She seizes this chance to tell him about whatever it is that she's accomplished.

"I'm finally an offical Shinigami now," she begins, "I've entered the 13th squad."

She is so proud and before he can stop himself, he finds himself proud of her too. He knows Ukitake-taichou will take good care of her.

When Byakuya looks up, he is seeing Hisana again and this time she is standing behind her sister. She has a pleasant expression on her face and her pride is blatant. He can finally see whom she is looking at now.

--

Days, weeks, months after, she has begun to change. He can see she's becoming more like a woman than a girl, and more like she's in love than not.

Jubilation is practically emanating from her, and she is happier than she's ever been in this accursed mansion of empty corridors and memories she has no place in.

But it does not last long.

He catches wind of an hollow outbreak sounding from the 13th Division and that a certain black haired Kuchiki is involved. The vice captain, he knows him fairly well, has also been killed.

She comes not long after, trudging through the door with blood spotted all over like diamonds on a harlequin, all the while stumbling and tripping and crying, crying, crying.

He takes in the sight of her. She is a mess, her hair is tousled and sticking up at odds and ends, but most of all, her zanpakuto is covered in blood. Sobs wrack her body and she is screaming the most unintelligible words, but there are words he _can_ understand, even when he wished he didn't.

"I killed him, I killed him, I killed him, _I killed him!_"

Her voice is heartbreakingly painful and it takes his everything not to run over and hold her. He curses his laconic self because he is standing right in front of her, but the right words seem to escape his grasp and slip into the floorboards, joining the dust gathering below.

Rukia is quickly led away by the maids and Byakuya is left behind, frozen to his spot.

--

He sees her less each passing day. She stops asking him to join her meals. She wakes up extra early, tiptoeing around the corners and to the training fields every morning, only to come back with a battered body dragging behind and a broken spirit along her sleeve.

_She is fighting away the ghosts hiding around the corners _he thinks, _knows_, because that is what he has done all his life.

Hisana is standing in front of him again and he can see her much more clearer this time around; the contours of her face more vivid than any memory he covets.

_Help her,_ her mouth forms the words, but no such thing is uttered. But he can see she is pleading, eyebrows upturned and rosy lips pulled down at the corners.

_I can't._ He starts to say, _How can I, when I can't even help myself?_

--

It has been a long time since then, and he has missed so many chances to act. He sees Rukia hurting everyday, but it is never his place to act.

But a rambunctious orange-haired boy (with no sense of self-preservation, he might add, considering he had the courage to challenge him like this_)_ has shaken him awake to his senses and he starts to see.

He is Rukia's guardian, family, brother, and most of all, _someone who cares,_ and that is all that's really essential to save someone.

Byakuya waits not another second because he has wasted away too many and races to her side. A blade he knows well is shot through him and a sticky red mess is flowing out of him and drip drip dripping into the ground beneath.

But despite such circumstances, he is thankful she is safe and in his arms. He holds her close because he is so, so scared she will wilt away.

He can see Hisana walking towards them and for the first time, she embraces them, hands curling around their forms with a smile so tender. She is breathing warmth he hasn't felt in so long right into him again, amd he cannot help but to smile himself. The dust is clearing and he finally finds himself breathing.

Byakuya starts to see that perhaps together, they can start to heal.

--

Writing in this style is still rather new for me, so I apologize for any mistakes or odd phrases. It was fun writing this, as well as good practice, so I will work harder from now on. Thanks for reading this story and I hope you enjoyed it!


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